Quick Safety Tips When Stripping Commercial Floors
When stripping and refinishing commercial flooring we try and use some safety procedures. After applying floor stripper to floor finish people often refer to it like walking on an ice rink in sneakers.
Contractors always want to prevent occupants from walking on a floor during this process, often someone will think the floor is just “wet” and don’t realize how dangerous it can be if you walked on it unsuspectingly. Just talking one step can land us on our back or worse serious head injury.
Safety Signs
Wet floor signs and safety tape can be used to block off any areas while work is being completed. Nowadays most signs come in English and Spanish to warn pedestrians to stay away from this area, best case is too completely tape the doorways off.
PPE, some protective we can use is gloves of course. Strippers are caustic and can cause severe skin irritations, its easy to splash some on our hand when pouring or come in contact when scraping a corner. Grippers are a shoes that can be worn over footwear, they kind of look like big rubber slippers but with abrasive pads on the bottom to prevent falls. Eye ware should be used when pouring any chemicals, its easy to splash some into your eye that can cause severe burns.
Safety Data sheets or SDS always need to be forwarded to the contact person before any job. These sheets also should be carried in the van with a binder in the event of an accident and fire safety is involved.
Floor Machine Safety
Floor machines, the biggest concern with equipment is the electrical cords. When stripping a commercial floor we use a lot of water. Any open cords coming into contact with the water can cause electrocution or severe burns. One more thing is to make sure to be careful of over heating.
These are just some quick tips on floor stripping and refinishing safety.
